On the 100th anniversary of Boreham's arrival in Australia, the Official F W Boreham Blog Site has been established to foster interest and discussion on the life and writings of F W Boreham.
There are thousands of people around the world who have become acquainted with the writings of F W Boreham. I welcome your thoughts or questions on his life and writing and any research you have undertaken about this man and his work.

Frank William Boreham 1871-1959

A photo F W Boreham took of himself in 1911

Saturday, January 13, 2007

Links to Deeper MeaningsF W Boreham did not have an anthropocentric conception in which the taking of the sacraments merely satisfied a spiritual craving as one of his important views was that the sacramental granted a connectedness to the wider world, including a rootedness within the cosmos and a participation in the sacred realm. For example, Boreham saw the sacrament of gardening not only giving this prosaic activity a ‘glory’ but forging connections in the way:

“It links us not only to the prentice efforts of our first ancestors, but to thescientific sensations of the distant future. Under an easy assumption of hoaryantiquity and drab monotony, the garden guards the secrets that once read, willbecome the marvels of the unborn years”.[1]

Two-Way ConnectionsDr. Boreham saw the sacramental connecting in both ways. In elaborating on the responsibility of society’s artists and others who have experienced the sacred, David Tacey says:

This, perhaps, is the key feature of the visionary artist in any country at anytime: he or she ‘sees’ the sacred, when apparently the habitual consciousness ofthe day does not. The creative artist is a seer …. The task of the artist is toremind people that they do in fact have spiritual lives, that they do feel andsense a level of being that is beckoning them to new awareness andself-identity.[2]

Mutuality of ConnectionsA further development in Boreham’s thinking about the mutuality of sacramental connections is found in his story about his armchair, which is reminiscent of the essay entitled, ‘The story of furniture’, by Boreham’s mentor, Richard Jeffries.[3] After admitting that he had spent hundreds of hours in his chair, Boreham argued, “An armchair is more than an armchair ... if we listen with sufficient care, the old armchair is talking to us”.[4]

Finding the Soul of ThingsReflecting on another occasion about his armchair being driven off for auction prior to him relocating, the anguished writer said, “He cannot persuade me that the old armchair is merely leather and oak. Why, the chair all but spoke to me as it passed. There is something extremely soulful about furniture”.[5] The hundreds of hours in which Boreham had spent sitting in the chair had developed its soul. Remarking on the emergence of the chair’s personality and the termination of their relationship, Boreham concluded quaintly:

This has been a one-sided study. It has concerned itself almost exclusively withmy view of the old armchair. But what does the old armchair think of me? Thearmchair seems to me to be so much more than leather and oak. Do I seem to thearmchair to be ever so much more than flesh and blood? I catch myself thinkingabout the soul of the armchair, ‘Does the armchair catch itself thinking aboutthe soul of me? And if not, why not?’ And now the secret is out. I said that itwas all a matter of overflow. The soul of the armchair is my own souloverflowing into the chair.